


but not beyond repair

by robotchangeling



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, M/M, Reunion Fic, spoilers thru winter, trying to save the world for 10000 years is stressful
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-13
Updated: 2018-04-13
Packaged: 2019-04-21 18:57:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14291307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/robotchangeling/pseuds/robotchangeling
Summary: “My dear, you were torn into pieces by your own creations. Would you even know that you are incomplete?”“Wouldn't I?”I knew, Samot thinks,and it’s not a feeling I would wish on you.Samothes is alive; Samot takes some convincing.





	but not beyond repair

**Author's Note:**

> > what of the love that we once shared?  
> it's living inside us  
> battered but not beyond repair  
> 
> 
> "bigger than love", benjamin gibbard 

When Samothes first appears to him after ten thousand years, Samot drops everything he is holding. It’s only partially an accident. He drops to his knees and takes a moment to collect his thoughts along with the papers in his hands. This could be an illusion, or a memory, somehow. Surely not a ghost, unless--

Samothes is watching him deliberate. Samot rises and returns the papers to his desk.

“You're not him,” Samot says. “Not truly.”

“Samot,” he says, “I assure you that I am.”

_ Oh _ . Samothes’ gaze is too strong, and Samot has to turn away. “Not truly yourself, then. Not entirely.” Samot paces to the window and swallows hard. “My dear, you were torn into pieces by your own creations. Would you even know that you are incomplete?”

“Wouldn't I?”

_ I knew _ , Samot thinks,  _ and it’s not a feeling I would wish on you _ . 

Samot turns and tries to conceal the pity in his face. This was a possibility, yes, but he hadn’t thought-- “I will try to help you, but Hieron must take priority. Return to me when you can.” With a wave of his hand he dismisses this shadow of Samothes. He sits, alone again, but finds his hands shaking when he tries to write.

  
  
  


Samothes stumbles and removes the mask from his face with shaky hands. He doesn’t know what he expected, or even what he desired, from this reunion. But for Samot to disbelieve him so quickly was neither. 

It wasn’t too difficult to adjust the mask, to allow them to see each other. This blade can only contain Ingenuity so far when the proper tools are delivered to him. It seems, instead, that the bigger challenge will be Samot himself, if he will let Samothes try. 

Samothes can be patient. He will return.

  
  
  


“It's not that I don't wish to believe you,” Samot finds himself explaining. “But you were split. Your tomb still holds a part of you.”

Samothes sighs. “It holds Maelgwyn, you mean.”

“What's left of him, yes.”

They fall silent, for a time, at this. Samot wonders about Samothes in two different prisons, before he remembers that he can ask, now. “I don't understand how you weren't lost in the dark, like that,” he says.

“I was, for a time. I couldn't tell you how long.” Samothes explains. “But I had other souls there who needed me, so I learned to build with what I had.”

_ So he rebuilt himself. Of course he did. _ Samot’s hand hovers over Samothes’ for a long moment before he thinks better of it and pulls away.

  
  
  


In their early, early years, so many millennia ago, Samot looked at him like a puzzle to figure out, like if he could find the right questions to ask, then all of Samothes would be laid out for him to understand. Samothes sees a trace of that look, now, but with it is a fear of what he might find. What a pair they are, now, for Samot to fear the knowledge he seeks, for Samothes to hold paradise in a weapon of war. 

  
  
  


Samot has an ally, he thinks -- a friend, he feels -- who once created another person out of some part of himself. A fragment, yes, but did the phantasm not hold his own selfhood distinct from the wizard who made him? Where did the overlap start and end between the two? When, exactly, did Samot himself go from Nothing to Something, and what was he in between?

In the universities, they study questions of consciousness and self, and Samot has pondered these things with the best of them. Even for a god, the answers are less clear than he would like. When he and his kin died and remade themselves, was the person who emerged from the wood unharmed the same as the one who went down in flames and ash? He had a theory, once, but Samothes didn't want to kill him to test it, so he moved on. It was only a curiosity, then.

  
  
  


The next time that Samothes visits, Samot is drinking, and their son is dead. 

He finds Samot with a flush in his cheeks and a bottle in his hand. He doesn't startle when Samothes approaches. 

“Shall I assume you know?” Samot’s expression falters, and he looks panicked for a moment. “I- I don't want to have to tell you.”

“I know,” Samothes confirms quietly, taking a seat across the table. Samot turns his head to the side.

“Would you like to know one of the first thoughts I had, Samothes?” Samot asks, his voice tinged with bitterness. “I thought, well, at least I won't have to fight him any longer. At least he can no longer put the world in danger with his plans.”

Samot turns and meets Samothes’ eyes for the first time this night, touches his fingertips to Samothes’ cheek for just a moment. “This is the world you’ve returned to, my love. You can't know how much I wish it were otherwise.”

Samothes wants badly to comfort him and to be comforted, to take refuge in their mutual grief and regret. But Samot still doubts him, and Samothes couldn't stand to upset the balance they are building, not when so much else is crumbling. Instead, he lets Samot pour him a drink, and they sit together in silence for the rest of the night.

  
  
  


Perhaps it wouldn't be so bad, Samot thinks, to accept this fragment of Samothes, this imitation of a whole man. He speaks and looks the same, seems to think the same thoughts his Samothes might have. He wants Samot, after everything. Samot thinks of the last time he saw Samothes alive, of their arguments beforehand and the final sword he forged, and he feels sick.

  
  
  


Samot’s hair is up, this time, and the few loose strands blow distractingly in the evening breeze. Samothes wants to gather them for him, to smooth them away from his tired eyes.

Instead, he rests his hands on the balustrade and stays still. “Would it sound too trite to say that I missed you?” He wonders. 

Samot looks out over the city, his mouth forming the words before he voices them. “You must understand,” he says, “that I couldn't let myself hope you’d return, with the world left unchangeable.

“I wasn't sure if any of you survived, aside from-” Samot pauses, breathes, leaves their loss unspoken. “Let alone any part that I could speak with, that I could…”

Samot reaches out, up, his hand lost in the ocean between them. Samothes grasps it like a lifeline.

“Forgive me if it seems too good to be true,” Samot says. 

_ Oh, Samot,  _ thinks Samothes,  _ if we’ve learned anything at all, it's that I will always forgive you _ .

  
  
  


When Samot is not busy directing the stars to fall, he finds he looks forward to Samothes’ next visit. It's dangerous, he thinks. If he were to let Samothes in now, only to find him missing some part of himself -- to deem him lacking, insufficient -- well, Samot thinks, that wouldn't be fair to either of them. 

Still, Samot sees this Samothes, who never knew a Hieron that wouldn't be shaped to his will, who radiates so  _ much _ of himself that Samot feels overwhelmed at times, and he finds himself wanting to take that chance. 

If he should discover another way to stop the heat and the dark, with only the price of Samothes’ life, again, would he take it? Would he wield the blade himself this time?

(Samot knows that he would. In all these years he’s never regretted the motive behind his mistakes. Better to spare them both the heartache of pretending otherwise.)

  
  
  


Samot rarely admits it even to himself, but there are times when he wonders if Samol might be right, if there might be no solution to this final puzzle. That would seem a cruel twist, for Him of Leisure to sacrifice so much that he loves only to find the end inevitable. Yet the only other choice is to stop trying and wait for Nothing to consume them, and that’s no choice at all. 

This night, though, Samothes is with him. Samot wants -- oh, he wants.

Samot pulls Samothes closer until they are pressed forehead to forehead, breathing in each other’s air. When they last held each other, they were still in the home they shared with Maelgwyn. How wrong it seems, that they can have this again while their son lies dead. So much feels wrong, these days, but it's harder to dwell on with Samothes raising a hand to cup his face and the other to stroke his hair. Samot lets himself breathe.

  
  
  


Samot rises earlier, now, than Samothes ever knew him to before. Samothes puts on the mask, and finds him beside a window as he drinks his morning tea. Samot watches the sunrise, and Samothes watches Samot. Oh, it would be easy to pretend, in these quiet moments, to forget the years and distance between them. Easier, if not for the sadness he sees in Samot’s eyes some days. Easier still, if it weren’t a reminder of all they have lost, of all they have done, since last spending their mornings together.

  
  
  
  


Samothes hasn’t come to him for longer than usual, and Samot begins to worry. How would he know, if something happened to sever their connection or to put Samothes in danger? To lose him again, so soon -- Samot tries not to consider it.

When Samothes does return, it is with an explanation of how his city has kept him busy: decisions he’s made, things he’s built -- Samot can’t pay attention to the specifics, and finds himself laughing in his relief. “Oh, Ingenuity,” he muses, “still so dedicated, hmm?” Samothes smiles at this, and at the hand Samot places on his shoulder. Samothes smiles, and Samot realizes,  _ oh, I’ve already decided, haven't I? _

“Missed me, did you?” Samothes teases. 

Samot scoffs, and lets his fingers wander up to the side of Samothes’ face, to begin tracing out patterns long unexplored. “Of course I did, you fool.”

“Well,” Samothes says, “I’m sorry I kept you waiting, then.”

Samot stills his hand on Samothes’ jaw. “I’m sorry, too,” he says softly. Samothes’ smile wavers, for a moment, and Samot leans up to kiss it away.

Perhaps they’ve both changed, then, but this -- oh, this feels the same as it ever did. Outside the walls of their cities, the storm clouds are gathering and the temperature is rising.  _ If we can weather this together_, Samot thinks, with Samothes’ hands at his back, Samothes’ beard against his cheek as he grins,  _ perhaps we’ll stand a chance, after all_. 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not going to meet my camp nano goal but I did this so it's all worth it.
> 
> I'm robotchangeling on tumblr (or littlesocialistrobot again! can't decide!)


End file.
